'Fern
Gully hasalways been a visual delight, if one does not
remember what it used to be like.'

At
the end of the '90s the efforts to restore Fern Gully to at least
something of its former beauty were still failing to produce
satisfactory results.

The 1999 initiative:

Daily
Gleaner, January 13, 1999

Fern
Gully gets face-lift

THE
FERN Gully initiative to restore the
pristine

charm and rain forest importance of
the St Ann beauty spot got underway last week, with
the

planting of hundreds of ferns to
replenish the

depleting stock.

North
Coast businessman and JLP Minister of State

spokesman for Tourism and the Environment,

Michael Belnavis, led a group of friends and

supporters, to begin the project he
announced and

initiated last summer. Belnavis
hailed the event

"a grand success"

The
fern-planting exercise will be an ongoing
one -

"a desperate move," says
Belnavis, "to save
Fern

Gully, and help to stop major soil
erosion that could

threaten the town of
Ocho Rios
with massive

flooding during very heavy
rainfall"

Belnavis
has put together a 14-member board of

directors to help him administer the
programme.

Peter Phillips

Daily
Gleaner, January 23, 1999

For
Fern Gully face-lift

The
Editor, Madam:

I
must use your column to commend the
relevant

persons for undertaking "The Fern
Gully Face Lift"
project, (Daily Gleaner Jan 13, 1999)
However I still have a major concern.
This is regarding the "fern persons"
present in the

gully. These individuals
continue to strip the gully of

the
ferns and use them to decorate themselves.

Whilst
this is an interesting sight to the
tourists who

frequent the gully, this
practice has a long-term

consequence where
preserving the beauty of the

gully is
concerned. I hope the relevant persons will
look into this
matter.

NATURE
LOVER

Via
Go-Jamaica

Daily
Gleaner, January 24, 1999

Major
road repairs for St Ann - Dr.
Phillips

About
$100 million is to be spent
on major road
repairs in St. Ann over the next six
weeks. . . .

The
Minister said that work on the Fern
Gully road

would be done to facilitate
easier access to the

resort town. However, he explained that the

Ministry was seeking
to establish aclaim on the

previous contractors who
had not completed the

work satisfactorily.

...........................................

. . . but the problems still continued:

Daily
Gleaner, April 23, 1999

Protests
continue in Fern Gully

Ocho
Rios. St. Ann;

While
the rest of the island cooled down
from the

three days of protest [over gas prices], yesterday
Ocho Rios heated
up with a huge blockade in Fern

Gully.

As
early as 5.00 a.m. motorists were
greeted with

burning tyres, gasolene spread
across the road, old

wrecked vehicles,
stones and other debris covering

a stretch
of the popular tourist attraction.

The
St Ann police and soldiers were quickly
on the

scene and after a few testy exchanges with

residents, started clearing the
blockade.

Daily
Gleaner, May 27, 1999

The
trailer-truck threat on the roads

The
sheer size and menace of these units
make their

drivers seem to be a law
unto themselves; and the

fact that they
are able to get away with some of
the

things they do sends a wrong
message to other road

users. For example,
although trailers are not

supposed to use
areas such as Fern Gully in St Ann,
they can often be seen doing just that,
endangering

the lives of other road users.
One truck breaking down in Fern Gully can, and

often does, back up traffic to and from Ocho Rios

for hours. This
contributes to lawlessness, as

every time
one person gets away with bending the
rules, others will
follow the example.

However, the work was started . . .

Daily
Gleaner, August 1, 1999

He
[Peter Phillips] also mentioned that rehabilitation work in the Fern Gully will begin on Tuesday, with

half of the
$12 million cost being borne by the
contractors who carried out the previous
rehabilitation work. The contractors had agreed
to

bear some of the costs because of
concerns about

the quality of work done under the previous

contract.

Daily
Gleaner, August 3, 1999

Fern
Gully closed

Fern
Gully in St. Ann has been closed to
the

motoring public between 9:00 a.m. and
5:00 p.m.

daily
for about one month, Milton Hodelin,
director

of maintenance at the Ministry of
Transport and

Works, said motorists should
use alternate routes

through Breadfruit Hill
Road and Chalky Hill Road

during those
hours.

Fern
Gully repairs

Repairs
and rehabilitation to the road and drains
in Fern Gully begins today. The work is
estimated

to
cost $12 million, with the Government paying
half the amount. The remaining 50 per
cent will be

borne by the contractors who did the
original work.

Transport and Works Minister,
Dr. Peter Phillips,

commended the contractors
for taking

responsibility for the damage to
the attraction,

noting that the
work must be done to high
standards.

Comment on the efforts in Fern Gully continued, however, to be essentially critical.

Daily
Gleaner, August 6, 1999

Fern
Gully again

After
the expenditure of millions of dollars to
restore Fern Gully to something of its
pristine splendour, the

Government has found
itself in the position of having to
spend another huge sum on the same
project, just two

years after the work
was supposed to have been done.

Fern
Gully, with its luxuriant growth of tropical
trees and plants, is one of Jamaica's
prime tourist attractions.

Unfortunately, it
forms part of the much-used North Coast
main road leading to the resort town of
Ocho Rios.

Because
of the heavy traffic which has to pass
through the tree-shaded ravine, the former
beauty spot has

lost a great deal of
its attractiveness. The road surface has
been severely damaged and the vegetation
ruined

by the toxic fumes from the
buses, trucks, trailers and other heavy-duty
vehicles which go through it daily.

Hence
the effort to restore it to some
semblance of its former glory, with regard
to the road surface and also

with an
eye to the preservation of its natural
vegetation.

However,
the road repairs which had been undertaken
proved to be unsatisfactory, and so the
Ministry of

Works has decided to have
the work done over. The contractor on
the first job has agreed to pay
one-half of the

cost of the latest
repairs, though Minister Phillips stilt felt
constrained to warn against the consequences
of not

doing work according to
specifications.

Now
that another attempt is being made to
make Fern Gully look like the beauty
spot it once was, perhaps

it is not
too much to ask that steps be taken
to limit its use as a main road:
certainly, monitoring its use by the
heavy-duty vehicles which have been largely
responsible for its deterioration over time.

Daily
Gleaner, August 10, 1999

Monitoring
unit falls down on Fern Gully road

By
Lynford Simpson, Freelance Writer

The
Ministry of Transport and Works is
admitting that failure on the part of
its Monitoring Unit to identify

structural
weaknesses at the time resurfacing work was
done on the Fern Gully road in St.
Ann less than two

years ago, is the
main cause for the rapid deterioration of
the structure.

Permanent
Secretary in the Ministry, Dr. Alwin Hales,
said the road started going bad almost
as soon as the

work was completed,
following severe flooding in St Ann.
Ironically, the work was done by General
Paving

Company, the same firm which did
the resurfacing of the Bog Walk Road,
for which it has been commended.

But
just what went wrong in the Fern Gully
and is the Monitoring Unit, which is
located in the Public Works

Department
solely to blame? Dr. Hales explained that
apart from the Unit, the Ministry employs
consultants

to do site supervision and
monitoring. He said the Unit is expected to
do its own monitoring. Yet, with

consultants
and a Unit staffed with civil engineers
structural defects
were not identified.

While
the Unit is expected to work alongside
the consultants, it has its own problems,
chief of which
is a staff

shortage. Of the four civil
engineer positions in the department, only
two are filled at the moment because of
inadequate enumeration.

"It
(inadequate renumeration) not only affects the
Unit but the entire Ministry and it is
something we
are

Fern
Gully, once an awesome sight for tourists and locals, has gone from
beauty spot to ugly duckling.

The
Fern Gully road which has been dug up for resurfacing has become a
source of inconvenience and embarrassment, say residents and tourism
officials, Meanwhile taxi-drivers, tour operators and craft vendors
say business has nose-dived since work started on the road four
months ago. In recent months a number of accidents have also been
reported along the uneven and potholed stretch of road.

Road
repairs scheduled to last a month is three months behind while huge
holes — channels for water
— line the roadside.

Last
week, frustrated by the situation, the St. Ann Chamber of Commerce
called on the Ministries of
Works, Security and Tourism to address the matter with urgency.

"This
surely is a manifestation of the callous disregard for the many road
users, a fair proportion of
whom are visitors to our resort town," the Chamber said.

"Fern
Gully doesn't have much to offer by way of scenic beauty as before,"
said Samuel Jackson, a taxi
operator. "There was a time when it was one of our favourite
spots to take visitors but now it's almost
an embarrassment."

Mr.
Jackson said that the insistence of truck drivers on going through
Fern Gully, although there are
signs telling them not to, has contributed to "the tragic
destruction" of one of the island's most scenic
areas.

Motorists
have been asked to use the road through Breadnut Hill as an
alternative route between 9:00
a.m. and 5:00 p.m.

In
August the Transport and Works Ministry signed a $12 million contract
with General Paving Company
Limited. Half the cost was to be borne by the contractor who
initially worked on the road two
years ago. Since then the area has rapidly deteriorated, due to
severe flooding. At August's signing Transport and Works Minister Dr.
Peter Phillips insisted that the contractors would have to take full
responsibility for any shoddy work done the second time around.

The
Kingston-based contractors is blaming bad weather for missing its
deadline.

"The
weather has been very unkind to us over the past couple of months and
this has prevented us from completing the work. We had three good
days last week and we got to lay as much asphalt as we
could," said Anthony Matheson, project engineer for the
contracting firm.

He
noted that asphalt could not be laid during rainfall but that the
resurfacing could be completed this
week, weather permitting.

He
also dismissed suggestions that the company had run out of money,
after accepting responsibility for the previous work.

'Fern
Gully to glow again'

. . . and, at the very end of the 1990s, yet another project, promising 'environmentally friendly activities' which would be undertaken in Fern Gully.

Daily
Gleaner, December 28, 1999

Chamber
of commerce to aid enviro projects

The
St. Ann Chamber of Commerce is now
able to assist community-based and
nongovernmental organisations to access funding
for environmental projects up to a value
of US$50,000 each.

Speaking
at a function recently in Runaway Bay,
St. Ann, Second vice-president of the
Chamber, Andrew Grant, said
a grant

for US$400,000 has been allocated
to the organisation to finance projects in
communities between Dunn's
River and White River

and up to 10
miles inland.

The
amount is part of a US$1.2 million
allotment by the United States Agency
for International Development (USAID)
for

projects to be undertaken in Negril,
Port Antonio, Ocho Rios and theenvirons.

Mr.
Grant stressed that environmentally friendly
organisations would be required to submit
proposals to the Chamber for

approval before
funds could be disbursed.

He
pointed out that two projects have already
been submitted, and if they were approved,
persons would be able
to get

connected to the Ocho Rios
sewerage treatment system, and environmentally
friendly activities could be undertaken in
Fern Gully.